Yaw

yaw
verb, intransitive. To twist or oscillate about a vertical axis. Also a noun.

The red-tailed hawk hunted low, skimming across a fence that bordered a pasture, then a gravel lane, then another fence before it swooped up and took rest on the branch of an oak. Its perch was well-chosen: it was cloaked in masses of leaves and could not be seen from the ground. Throughout its passage, it had not uttered a sound.


With a shrill cry, it left its blind on the tree and flew in a different direction toward an open glade carpeted with tall grass. Finding no prey, it flexed its tail and yawed. It slowly ascended a thermal column, spiraling upward until it was no more noticeable to an earthbound viewer than a sparrow might have been.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.